Apple Is Reportedly Buying Shazam At A Huge Discount

The Cupertino-based company is in the process of finalizing buying the media identifying company Shazam.

According to TechCrunch and Recode, Apple is wrapping up the $400 million deal with Shazam, which will allow Apple to incorporate Shazam’s audio recognition technologies and save money on the commissions for Shazam sending users to the iTunes Store to purchase content. The Wall Street Journal reported that most of Shazam’s revenue in 2016 was up 10 percent of all digital downloads thanks to users purchasing content on iTunes.

This $400 million deal is a huge discount compared to the company’s value last year, which was around $1 billion. It was reported that Spotify and Snapchat had approached Shazam about a deal, but clearly, Shazam was more interested in Apple.

The Verge thinks that Apple will highly benefit from Shazam’s augmented reality technology to build on its ARKit and to compete with Google Lens.

The technology lets users scan magazines, books, posters, advertisements, and other physical products which could then launch 3D animations, product visualizations, and 360-degree videos. If Apple wanted to, say, build its own version of Google Lens, this could be a good place to start. It would also build on the company’s existing ARKit efforts, which have made iOS a leading platform for AR developers.

Hopefully, Apple will use Shazam to continue to advance its technology and create more content to help make its users lives a little easier.